to put off until another day or time.

Or Procrastination. It's an interesting thing. Right now I'm sitting in the school library and I'm supposed to be writing a paper on a man named Jose Guadalupe Posada, who was a Mexican engraver and artist in the 19th century. I need to fill 5 to 6 pages with information on analyzing the assigned article on him, and then explaining the influence he carried into the 20th century. Here's a small example of the kind of work he does:



I kinda like his style. It seems almost all his work is skeletons which he made to satirize the government at the time. The problem is I really have no interest in how he influenced upcoming artists into the next century. Based on all the art classes I've taken and even a few of the animation ones, it seems like the academic art world is obsessed with how artists influenced the up and coming artists. Like for a medium that pretty much defines creativity they seem to like to try to dissect it and reveal just how unoriginal the art world really is. Or it's also entirely possible that I'm totally missing the point of people who are art scholars.

Also, paper writing is something that always gives me worlds of trouble. When I entered college, I considered myself a fairly capable writer when it came to essays. There's no way I'd even try to say that now. I've fallen into the normal college student loop where I procrastinate until the night before it's due, and just through any of the first things that come to mind on the page.

I've also been thinking a lot today about procrastination on a longer time line, withing the context of my own life. It seems like for college students, writing papers is what we're kinda supposed to do. Research a wide range of topics and write papers about them. Papers, papers, papers. I don't do any of this research, so all these papers don't really get done either. I think this is part of the reason (a very small part, I hope) that I stick with animation and Japanese so hard. We are rarely if ever required to write papers, and it rocks. But I'm wondering if this is just an extended method of procrastination on my part. Like maybe the issue is, I'm telling myself that "I want to do research in Japanese, but wait! I don't know Japanese" so now I'm procrastinating doing this research necessary for growing into the next step in life, by studying Japanese. Once I learn Japanese to a native level, will I then grow to desire to go to Japan and research there? Who knows. I hope not.

I got a new camera for my birthday. And tomorrow is a rehearsal/lunch thing for a visual artist coming to DePaul this week through the Japanese department, so I should have some good opportunities this week to take some interesting photos. I can tell that my Japanese teacher, who has been organizing this entire event, has been working very hard and this is very important to her, so I will do my best. I hope it turns out to be interesting. I've been needing to do something. Life has been starting to hit routine as of late.